Management Lessons from RTA Dubai

At first glance Muhammad Yasin was like any other Road Driving Instructor in Dubai. Tall, lanky and a hint of a sneer in his smile, he was an even more unlikely Coach. An hour later, I had to revise all my notions about him as I emerged confident about my parking skills and amazed at the lessons in coaching that he had left me with.

?

The quest for a driving license in Dubai has felled many an accomplished driver. The meticulously drawn up system inspires both awe and fear. I think the amount of thought that has gone into the design of each stage is humongous. It is not just about adapting from right hand drive to left hand. Instead, it is about getting everything first-time right, be it lane-change or parallel parking.

?

And talking about parallel parking, this stage was proving to my Achilles heel. I had breezed through all the other four tests – Angle parking, garage parking, hill parking and emergency brake test and just could not fathom why I had flunked the parallel parking test twice in a week! Somehow, the driving test can really bog you down and impact everything about you – work, leisure, posture or just self-esteem.?And that’s when I signed up with Muhammad Yasin for an hour of practice. All parallel parking only. I came away with some interesting lessons both at the wheel of the car and the wheel of life. Let me capture five of these management lessons in coaching here.

?

I took the wheel of the Nissan Sunny and waited for him to sit next to me and start his ‘lessons’ for the day. Instead, I was surprised to see him pick up a cup of tea and stand at the kerb side and ask me to park by myself. He asked me to repeat the maneuver five times. I felt like a fool while he didn’t utter a word as I kept going back and forth under his watchful gaze. When I parked the car after the fifth time and looked up, he came over to my side of the window and gave me a smug smile. This got me even more riled up, but I listened to him carefully. He said he know the exact problem with my parking. One, I was doing it way too fast. Two, I was turning the steering wheel too slow. And third, I was not making allowances for errors in judgement. I was amazed at how he had identified the issues. Coaching is about the individual and not the lesson. Unless you spot the issue with the individual, the lesson is irrelevant, and the message will not land. As managers, we are often tempted to ‘mouth’ the golden rules without realizing that you have to ‘interpret’ the rule for the specific person you are addressing.

?

Yasin then gave me his ‘mantras’. If you have started turning too fast initially, then straighten the car earlier than usual in stage two but in the third phase of turning full left, do that late. On the other hand, if you have started turning too late in stage one, then delay the straightening but accelerate the last stage of turning left into the parking lot. Unlike the earlier instructors, this was nothing about ‘preparing’ the car prior to parking, ‘watching’ the yellow line or ‘rotating’ the steering wheel at standard points. My instructions where specific to my style and my fallacies! Coaching lessons then have to be customized for the individual. The onus is on the coach to prepare the ‘specific lessons’ and not on the coached to ‘efficiently master the lessons’

?

All this while, Yasin refused to sit down in the car next to me. Now that he had identified the issue and the antidote, I expected him to sit next to me and ‘teach’ me to address the issues. Instead, he asked a Man Friday to take over and sauntered off to get himself another cup of tea. Just before leaving, he waved cursorily at me and said ‘Just practice this twenty times’. The Man Friday gave me a look that balanced disdain with sarcasm that said, ‘get on with it, buddy’. As I kept moving back and forth for the next thirty minutes, I realized that I was now much more conscious of what I was doing and in fact making dynamic adjustments to compensate for my style. As a result, I got it right every time! Coaching is not about the stick and the carrot. In real life, every individual is on his or her own and accountable for their actions. A good coach recognizes this and allows the trainee to ‘win’ and that alone is the best reward.

?

With ten minutes left for the scheduled class to get over, Yasin finally made an appearance. He got into the car and turned around to look at me. “You now know the technique, have practiced it enough and are also doing it right. So don’t over think this issue; now just go and do your work and when its time, take your test confidently”. Coaching is about sensible conversation; it is not about jargon or motivational hurrah. It is about identifying the issue, addressing it and building confidence through practice.

?

Yasin returned my learning permit and left without even acknowledging my ‘thank you’. He just repeated the mantras… Stage One too early, then step two early and step three later. If Stage One is too late, then step two also later but Stage Three has to be done earlier. The words kept ringing in my head. I took my RTA test the very next morning and passed with flying colours. All I could remember was the mantra. Coach in a manner that the lesson is more important than the Guru. Don’t ever let your persona overshadow the lesson. Coaching is about facilitating and not about delivering. Do you remember who taught you cycling? No. But do you remember the first lesson you learnt? “Always look up”. ?

?

And that’s what the Dubai RTA process taught me today. As managers, we are led to believe that focal point is the coach. Instead, it is always about the person who is coached. In the words of Tom Landry, “ A coach is someone who tells you what you don’t want to hear, who has you see what you don’t want to see, so you can be who you always known you could be”